Cafe's closing brings end to cook's 49-year career

On Sunday, Ladyman's Cafe cook Jack Covert will rise at 4:30 a.m. and head to work. He will arrive at the restaurant by 5 a.m. and light the stove, heat up the sausage gravy and prepare what he will need for the breakfast rush, the same way he has for years.\nBut when Covert's shift ends at 1:30 p.m., he will hang up his apron for good after 49 years in the Ladyman's kitchen.\nNow 72, Covert has worked at Ladyman's, a Bloomington landmark, since it first opened in 1957. On Dec. 10, a little less than a year after Walnut Street Development purchased the building housing the restaurant, Ladyman's Cafe will close for good. Ladyman's building will be torn down next spring to make way for Finelight Strategic Marketing Communications offices. And Covert, for the first time in nearly 50 years, will be out of a job.\n"I'm going to be fighting for unemployment," he said. "They tell me I should have no problem, but I don't know." \nA part-time job is not out of the question, Covert said, but at this point, he wants to stay home and take care of his ailing wife, Pat. \n"I don't like to go into places I don't know," he said. "I'd have to learn a new routine and new people. I'm too old to go through that again." \nCovert says he is not much of a talker, gesturing with a long, serrated knife he used to cut up ham for ham salad. Most of the customers know the man by his food, not his face.\nBut owner Dana Reynolds intended to see Covert get the recognition he deserves, which included dragging him out to meet some of the customers last Sunday morning. "When I went out there, they all started clapping, and I tell you, I must have been red as a beet," Covert said.\nDoug Hatton, part of a large "coffee group" of older, mostly retired men, has visited Ladyman's several times a week for the last 10 or 15 years but has not met Covert. But he knows his food.\n"Everybody has their own favorites," Hatton said. "I come in for lunch a few times a week. I usually get a low-fat cheeseburger, or the biscuits and gravy or a bacon and egg sandwich." \nOf course, Covert has had years to hone his skills. He started working in a Bloomington restaurant as a 17-year-old high school senior, washing dishes in the back. Later, a Ladyman's cook took it upon himself to teach Covert the trade, and soon Covert was an assistant chef.\nIn 1957, when Tom Ladyman, who worked with Covert, decided to buy the restaurant that would become Ladyman's Cafe, he asked Covert to come along as his cook. He was just 23 at the time and had no idea he'd be there for the rest of his career. \n"I never learned how to do anything else," Covert said. "I never knew anything about electricity or plumbing or cars." \nToday, not learning another trade is a source of regret for Covert, who has no medical insurance. If circumstances had not closed the restaurant, Covert does not know how long he might have postponed retirement. \n"It depends on how long I could keep going," he said. "I have a breathing problem; too much exertion and I get out of breath." \nStill, he will miss the people he works with, he said, especially Reynolds, who purchased the restaurant five years ago. \n"She's a real sweet person, and she's always been good to me," he said. \nFor the first 35 years of his career, Covert worked six days a week, he said. He moved down to five days a week later, and now for the last several years, he has been working Monday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.\n"It's a good shift because I always get off when it is still the daytime, even in the winter," he said.\nThough Covert down plays his role in Ladyman's history, Reynolds, who has worked at Ladyman's for 17 years and owned it for five, disagrees. \n"When I think of Ladyman's, I think of Jack Covert," Reynolds said. "Jack is Ladyman's. Without him, I could have never done it." \nStill, by next week, Covert will have all the daylight hours he wants. He'll just have to try break his habit of rising early. \n"It'll be weird," Covert said. "I'll have to see if I like it"